Mystery of Prayer and Perspective

Prayer can be mysterious. Perspective can help remove some of the mystery.

People around the world pray, so there must be something to praying.

Remote tribes present offerings, praying for health, food, rain, children and victory in battles. The Incas and Aztecs offered humans as a sacrifice to attract the attention of their gods.

The word prayer comes from Latin ‘precarius’ meaning “to obtain by entreaty”, and it is where we get our word Precarious. Maybe this is why many pray out of desperation, or in precarious situations.

As a missionary, I saw Africans pray intensely and freely. It came naturally for them to seek God for their daily bread as they saw so much poverty around them.

Americans seem to feel less need to pray than third world countries. Why pray for daily needs when your pantry is well stocked?

Martyn Lloyd-Jones says this about prayer:

“Of all the activities in which the Christian engages, and which are part of the Christian life, there is surely none which causes so much perplexity, and raises so many problems, as the activity of prayer.”

I have seen prayers answered, while other prayers seemingly go unanswered. I have prayed a lot of prayers over the last 70 years, and I can say that prayer is indeed a mystery.

  • Why does God show up sometimes and not others?
  • Why does God answer some prayers and not others?
  • Why can I hear the still small voice of God in my spirit sometimes when at other times, He is nowhere to be found?
  • How can thousands of believers pray for a cancer-ridden man and still watch him die, leaving a beautiful wife and children to grieve?
  • Why does God heal some and not others?

Theologians and pastors have their thought-out answers; but they don’t always satisfy the aching heart.

Myopia  

One meaning of the word myopia is nearsightedness.

There is an area of Highland Park that looks out over the trees and down to the winding creek below. Some of the trees have to be 100’ high, and from where I stood I could see right across into the tops of the trees. It is a beautiful, peaceful sight, with the quiet sounds of the forest and water whispering below. It looks so much different from above then below.

Maybe this is what prayer is about to God? It is not so much Him answering all of our prayers, but getting us to realize how small we are as we look up at the giant trees from our creek bed below.

Maybe the unanswered prayers for salvation of loved ones and friends, for healing of the diseased and afflicted, for the deliverance of the persecuted and tortured, for peace and harmony in a world of strife and war, are just our nearsightedness. Maybe we can’t see the forest for the trees. Maybe we need to climb to a higher elevation for a new perspective. One hundred- foot trees didn’t look so big from where I stood in Highland Park. Maybe God is answering those prayers in a way we cannot see from where we are standing.

I’m sure your problems and mine, aren’t so big from where God is looking down on them.

The Milky Way galaxy is just one of 100 billion galaxies in the universe. The Voyager Spacecrafts I & II have been traveling 100,000 miles per hour, a distance of almost 13 billion miles, for 39 years! The purpose of their mission originally was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, then on to explore Uranus and Neptune and now they are in interstellar space exploring the outermost edge of the Sun’s domain and beyond. Earth is just a pale blue dot seen from Voyager I.

The Psalmist David said this around 3000 years before Voyager’s mission:

“When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers–the moon and the stars you set in place–what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)

The mystery of prayer begins to be removed by correcting our perspective.

Where are we standing when we look for understanding about prayer?

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai stands at 2,717 feet above the city. If you were to stand on the observation deck, would you be able to make out your friend standing below on the street?

God asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

Prayer’s main purpose is to change our perspective from being our own god to realizing how small we really are compared to the One who has created us. 

Job humbly apologizes to God, saying that he had no idea what he was talking about!

Adam communed with God as naturally as breathing in daily conversation. God walked with Adam in the garden each evening. Prayer, even though it can be mysterious, still should be the created conversing with the Creator!

The conversation should contain two main things:

  1. acknowledgement of our need for Someone greater than ourselves.
  2. praise and thanksgiving for that Someone providing our daily bread

Patricia Hampl wrote of prayer, “Fundamentally it is a position, a placement of oneself. Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.”

Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud, one saw stars. Source Unknown.

A canny farmer was approached by a stranger one day and asked how much he thought his prize Jersey cow was worth. The farmer thought for a moment, looked the stranger over, then said: “Are you the tax assessor, or has she been killed by your car?” Source Unknown.

A lot about mysterious prayer can be explained just by taking a different perspective…..

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